Question: What books were meaningful for you?
Em asks…
My 2-year-old asked her teacher today, “are you a boy or a girl?” I love this time of wondering, of truly not assuming. Sadly, it will be brief. I want to teach her about gender, but the books are all binary (“every boy has a penis” etc).
Toddlers need a place to start, they’re laying a foundation…
how do I teach her the grey? Can I start with black and white? What books were meaningful for you?
Please post your response in the comments below.
» Ask Genderfork «
Posted by Freiya on April 2nd, 2014 at 08:00 am
Category: questions 3 comments »
April 5th, 2014 at 9:26 am |
Sarah and Ian Hoffman’s “Jacob’s New Dress”
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April 6th, 2014 at 1:40 pm |
Look up gender coloring books. I’ve flipped through a few and one that I found particularly cool is “Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon.”
You can usually find it in local feminist bookstores, and here it is on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sometimes-Spoon-Another-Coloring-Reach/dp/1604863293/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1NV6QRSBC85PFT6SEBGH
[Reply]
April 8th, 2014 at 5:49 pm |
You might want to check out The Gender Book (http://www.thegenderbook.com/) It is not specifically for children, but is highly visual/picture based.
Raising my Rainbow is an epic blog & book about a woman’s journey raising her gender creative son. This also shows diversity (http://raisingmyrainbow.com/)
My Princess Boy is a similar book (http://myprincessboy.com/) Blog is not updated as frequently.
A cute comic: http://rainbowbruises.deviantart.com/art/A-Comic-About-Gender-294271029
Just explaining things as they are could really help. Like, explain that there are some girls who have penises and the like and some girls with vaginas and the like; vise versa for boys, and then there are people who are neither boys nor girls or both or switching between who have all sorts of parts. Share pictures and stories of a variety of people both trans, cis, gender comforming and not, let them know that the world is full of immense, complex, and beautiful diversity of people.
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